#But seems very likely

[quillandrapier]

So this brilliant post by @thatgordongirl goes through each instance of where a piece of info ghosts' lives is revealed in season 1.

And it sent me sprialing where I came to an important conclusion about Julian (okay minor but kinda huge in a way) that Julian by the shows own lore must have not have been an MP during the years 1987-1991. Which I find weird but actually makes a lot of sense.

That's the important part, but I'm gonna delve a bit deeper on my reasoning and explain a little of the British political system. (I'm a touch rusty as I've not done British politics in 4 years but still) if you want to skip the preamble explaining British politics go to the line "Between elections".

So Britain is a parliamentary democracy. Unlike America, in our national elections we don't vote for our president or Prime Minster or even a party, we are only electing our local MP. Each election we elect one MP to a have a seat in our House of Commons to represent our concerns in Parliament.

While the MP may be a member of a Political Party and vote in line with how the larger political party wishes them to do, we actually are voting for an individual MP. However, in practice most people vote for the candidate that represents the party that best aligns with their political views and is most feesiable to win and don't really care WHO is running for each party.

Britain's two main parties are The Labour Party and The e Conservatives, which are nicknamed Tories. Julian was a member of the Conservatives, hence the term dead tory politian. We also have other Political parties such as the Liberal Democrats, SNP and the Green Party which was Julian's daughter, Rachel's, political party. The Green Party is basically the opposite of the Tory Party. (Which is why Julian is at first confused but goes, hey they all can't be perfect)

So when he ran for position of MP he would have been Julian Fawcett for the Conservative Party.

And the only way we get a new MP in a seat is through the position becoming vacant or through a general election. The general elections between 1980 and Julian's death took place in 1983, 1987 and 1992.

Between elections the only way we get a new MP is either when an MP dies in office or has to resign. The term used is when the seat is vacant.

So why would Julian run for a by-election if he already had a constituency? If he was already an MP he would not had been eligible to run in a by-election. While he could have resigned, then ran again the reason for a politian like Julian resigning would have been due to scandal. It would be politically crazy to run and win the same by-election and unlikely.

Also Julian was an MP in 1986 (as we see above having put the Bramptons through MPs expenses) so probably ran and won his election in 1983 (the one with the slogan "oh not him" from the episode, The hardest word in season 4)

The only way him contesting a by-election in 1991 makes sense is if he lost or did not stand in the 1987 General Election. This may be due to a mryiad of reasons but prehaps something about his image in 1987 made him lose.

Although he may have not have run in 87 take up a different office such as mayor of an area like Boris Johnson or Sadiq Khan for London. However if he didn't stand for this reason and then lost the mayor race then he'd be eligible to run in 1991.

But again the simplest explanation is that he lost in 87

So the Julian timeline is:

Wins in 1983 election and has a term that lasts until the 1987 General Election where he loses his seat. (Prehaps due to the expenses stuff from 1986)

He then runs for the contested seat in the 1991 by-election which he wins and maintains until the 1992 General Election. This is also where Julian solves the crisis by starting a war.

He then wins the 1992 election meaning upon his death he is the MP who dies in a sex scandal rather than a former MP who dies in a sex scandal. Which also means he's triggered another by election.

He may have also been re-elected in 1987, had to resign for some reason and then ran again in 1991. But that's quite convoluted for a backbencher. (@partywithponies pointed out to me he's mostly likely to be a backbencher rather than a prominent MP which... Fair enough)

Or this is all nonsense and was not meant to read into this much. I genuinely thought it was a mistake at first but if this is the timeline this makes sense.

So yeah Julian might not of been an MP during the years 1987-1991 which is strange to think since MP is like half his identity. Also what did Julian do for those years he weren't an MP, he certainly wasn't rasing his kid.

On that point, for a politian who often has to care about his image, having a child between the two elections make sense, to help rebrand his image into a "family" man. It's kinda cynical but makes sense.

Sidenote: MPs arent techincally allowed to resign, Tom Scott talks about it here. However when an MP is removed from a seat by a method that isn't death, most people call it resigning.

[thestuffedalligator]

So usually when an imaginary friend is a real thing in a story, it’s either a demon or a ghost or some supernatural boogeyman that probably wants to eat the kid they’ve befriended (Mama, a couple of the Paranormal Activity movies), or “imaginary friends” are just treated as a real thing in the setting, and if a child just thinks hard enough they can manifest a friend into existence (Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends, Happy).

And somewhere in the middle is an area where the imaginary friend in question is real and they are supernatural, but they aren’t malevolent, and they aren’t entirely honest about what they are. Like maybe they’re a fairy or a god or some kind of boggle from mythology, but they just got caught by a six year old and they don’t have time to get into it, so they just go “…Yes. I’m your imaginary friend. We haven’t met. How do you do.” And then they stick around because they do love this kid, and if you’re a boggle from mythology in the modern day good food is really hard to come by.

And at some level. That’s what I think Hobbes is.

[kitsu-katsu]

A group of queers of all types is a pride

A group of aces is a deck

A group of aros is a quiver

A group of trans women is a code-camp

A group of enbies is a byte

A group of bi people is a tandem

A group of pan people is a panic

Thank you for coming to my wilderness documentary

[monstermonger]

It's Autumn and the Leaves are Aflame!

Brought back an old lil sticker sheet, with a few of my fav lil dragons in the theme of my fav season c:

[hinamie]

I'll rip in hands and teeth and take a bite

[shadowtraveled]

"mithrun is the only real monsterfucker in dungeon meshi" is objectively the funniest bit you can get out of his everything, but in all seriousness i think his attraction to his love interest is deliberately overstated—and that makes sense, because romantic jealousy is a classic and digestible motive, which is explicitly what kabru was aiming for in condensing mithrun's backstory, and also because until chapter 94, mithrun wasn't willing to admit to the true nature of his desires.

but because romantic envy is both classic and digestible, it probably isn’t a unique enough or complicated enough desire to tempt a demon’s appetite. mithrun’s wish, as far as we can figure from kabru’s reduced retelling, was to have a life in which he had never become one of the canaries, and that carries like 3857 implications and desires within it. that’s delicious. his love interest acts as sort of a red herring to his motivation for making it, though. (side note: i'm saying "love interest" here because, keeping in mind that i barely speak japanese on a good day anymore, "想い人" is something i'd usually take as just kind of an old-fashioned and romantic way to refer to a lover, but in context i wonder if both the connotation of yearning and the vagueness are intentional, and i think this phrasing gets those aspects of it more effectively. anyway.)

mithrun considered his love interest to be untrustworthy. there was a minute where i thought that comment might be about a similar-looking elf (yugin, one of his squad members), but comparing the two…

the "sketchy" arrow is definitely referring to the elf we know as his love interest—the bangs go toward her right, she only has the one forehead ornament, and, most notably, her ears aren't notched.

every time she’s given a full-body depiction in his dungeon, she’s drawn as a chimera, with the body of a snake from the waist down. (side note: the “what if a dungeon has chimeras before reaching level 4?”/“then the dungeon lord is unstable” exchange just being mithrun grilling his past self alive is so funny. he’s so. but anyway) there are a couple things about this.

first, the snake part of the chimera appears to be modeled after some species of coral snake mimic

which, in the biology-for-fun manga, i… doubt is a coincidence, especially with the added context of the “untrustworthy” comment. the dungeon’s conjured illusion of mithrun’s love interest was a harmless copycat of a venomous original. for whatever reason, he felt this person was a threat and made up a "safe" version of her to be in a relationship with, and while it’s definitely possible to be attracted to or even love someone you find to be toxic and/or intimidating, when you take that into consideration alongside the configuration of her body, you get some interesting implications.

which brings us to our second point: if we assume that mithrun was not in fact fucking a snake, then sexual attraction, at least, was so far removed from his idea of a relationship with this person that he did not even bother to keep her dungeon copy human enough to maintain the illusion of the option of a sexual relationship. this is somewhat echoed in the depictions of their interactions, which also imply a frankly unexpected romantic distance. she kisses his cheek and he doesn't seem to react; she's at the edge of a narrow bed with only one set of pillows, on top of his blankets while he's underneath them.

the kiss is particularly interesting because it seems to contrast the text. kabru's narration tells us this was everything mithrun could have asked for, but mithrun is there looking unreadable to pensive, likely because this is right before the panel that makes it clear things in the dungeon are beginning to go wrong.

walking through this backwards for a minute, we have the physical barrier of his bedding and the spatial separation inherent in a bed made for one person, the emotional barrier of his mounting anxiety getting in the way of his ability to enjoy the affection he sought, and... the snake, which historically carries the connotation of temptation, yes, but also mistrust, barring physical intimacy. okay. ok. if a dungeon reflects the mentality of its lord, all of this might suggest that mithrun was not able to have any real desire for a relationship with this person. his unwillingness to be vulnerable or let another person in was insurmountable. but in that case, why was she such a focal point that she remained to the end, after his dungeon had stopped creating iterations of his friends to come and visit him? why would he get so upset over her meeting with his brother that he became lord of a dungeon about it?

well. mithrun's brother was also interested in her, probably genuinely. and mithrun had to win.

you have an older brother who your parents completely ignore, probably in part because he is chronically ill/disabled and almost definitely in part because he received a ton of recessive traits that resulted in rumors that he was an illegitimate child. you are aware, most likely because those same parents fucking told you, that you actually are an illegitimate child. but they keep you around because you had the good fortune of looking just like your mother. what can that possibly teach you but that you, like your brother, are disposable?

it's utterly unsurprising that mithrun, under these circumstances, developed a pathological need to be better than everyone around him. people don't keep you otherwise. i'd argue this is also why he says he looked down on everyone he knew while milsiril claims his dungeon reeked of feelings of inferiority—he sought out people's worst traits and prioritized them in his mind to protect his already extremely fragile sense of self-worth, and all the while he tried to be as likable and high-performing as he possibly could be. his parents disposed of him anyway, but even then he tried to keep up the performance. he was kind to everyone. he never once lost to a dungeon.

when he saw his "love interest" meeting up with his brother, what he saw was himself being replaced by a person his parents had always treated as worthless, and if that was what they thought of the child they'd kept, what value could anyone possibly see in the bastard they'd given away to die? mithrun and kabru tell the story like he wanted to win this unnamed elf's heart, but it was never about being with her. it was about cementing his worth, proving that he didn't deserve to be thrown away.

and so it's particularly cruel that his demon discarded him, too. but maybe it's also particularly gentle that, in the end, there was someone who refused to even consider giving up on him.

kui laid it out in three panels better than i could hope to.

yeah. it's love. you wanted to be loved, even when the only way you were able to understand it was through the desire to be wanted, and you wanted that so badly that the idea of being consumed felt like the promise of finally mattering to someone.

[itsdefinitely]

i've noticed a pattern

[puppyeared]

renaissance dogys

characters belong to @canisalbus

[akanemnon]

How to be an annoying little jerk 101

FIRST - PREVIOUS - NEXT

MASTERPOST (for the full series / FAQ / reference

[aysrin]

happy birthday ISAT !!

extras:

PIOU PIOU

[artkaninchenbau]

People keep on asking for more Baby Robin and Papadile so here is more Baby Robin and Papadile. Now never ask anything from me ever again

[emthimofnight]

I don't think they have their priorities straight....

[mokeonn]

"But if college was free, then people would abuse that and get useless degrees" hell yeah I would! If I could go to college without debt I would make it my job to get a degree in every little thing that interested me. I'd get a doctorate in film studies. I'd have a bachelor's degree for every science I like. I'd try to learn at least 5 languages with varying results. I would learn something "useful" like coding and then follow it up with a ""useless"" degree like art history. I'd be the world record speed run holder for getting every degree possible.

But I can't afford college without going into massive debt, so instead I spent the last 5 years trying to figure out what I am passionate enough about to consider going into debt over, because unfortunately being passionate about everything is extremely expensive to pursue.

[mischiefbuckley]

abc really said let’s go ahead and make wikipedia late night deep diving Buck who’s trying to learn all he can about current hyperfixation canon and I love it here so much

[odinsblog]

The crew of a massive container ship that crashed into the Francis Scott Key bridge in Baltimore early Tuesday warned of power issues before the collision, which caused the bridge to collapse into the frigid Patapsco River, officials said.

Maryland Gov. Wes Moore said the warning from the ship’s crew likely saved lives.

“We’re thankful that between the mayday and the collapse, that we had officials who were able to begin to stop the flow of traffic so more cars were not on the bridge,” Moore said. He called those officials heroes.

Moore noted that the bridge was up to code at the time of the collapse. He said the collapse was a “shocking and heartbreaking” event for the people of Maryland who have used the bridge for 47 years.

(continue reading)

[msmimundo]

In which Angel Dust gets big on politics

EDIT: Part 2